White House switchboard has been down, too

After President Barack Obama called on the American public Monday night to contact their members of Congress, phone lines and websites were jammed.

Almost immediately, websites for members of Congress — both Republicans and Democrats — became inaccessible due to high volume. In some cases, telephone callers were not even able to leave voicemail messages.

In other words, the president’s cattle call worked.

It also worked for the conservative movement, as White House phone lines appear to have been down for the better part of the day. Both the comments line and the central switchboard have been jammed.

Activists and other dissatisfied Americans began calling the White House Tuesday morning, to protest higher taxes and urge support of entitlement reform and a balanced budget amendment.

American Action Network started the effort last night in response to Obama’s call for constituents to call their members of Congress. After the speech, spokesperson Jim Landry and digital director Chris Georgia started their own call to action.

“We wanted to test to make sure we had the correct numbers,” said Georgia. “It would ring three or four times, and then the line would go dead.”

Georgia said he’s also heard other reports throughout they day of similar experiences with the White House phone lines.

When TheDC called the White House switchboard for confirmation for this story, the line had a busy signal. After a significant amount of time, TheDC hung up. The White House press office has not yet responded to an email request for comment.